Now is the moment, with the election (mostly) in our rear view mirror, to talk about the legislative agenda for sexual assault prevention. Research we published recently provides new evidence that comprehensive sexuality education should figure prominently in that agenda. We found that undergraduate women who received pre-college sexuality education that included instruction in how to say no to sex (refusal skills training) were half as likely to have been assaulted in college, even after accounting for gender, income, race/ethnicity and other factors. Students who received abstinence-only instruction were not shown to have significantly reduced experiences of campus sexual assault.

This wasn’t just a blue wave election — it was also a pink wave, powered by moms working for common-sense gun regulations, teachers angry about their pay, and women of all ages worried about reproductive rights. But Christine Blasey Ford’s testimony is also echoing in our ears, along with all the tweets and heart-wrenching essays. And all that after the tectonic cultural shift of #MeToo.

But the legislative response to #MeToo has been underwhelming. Yes, it’s good to address impunity among legislators and in other workplace settings — to ban non-disclosure agreements, provide training in appropriate workplace behavior, and improve processes for reporting and adjudication. It’s progress for folks to understand that taking a meeting in your bathrobe is not ok, but many assaults happen outside the workplace.

Unquestionably, prevention needs to reduce perpetration, not just help people protect themselves. But as public health problems go, sexual assault is more like car crashes than measles; there’s no vaccine, no one program that will prevent all assaults. Rather, it will require changes at multiple levels, from individual behavior to the broader environment. And sure, some change can happen within local school systems. But if we did have a vaccine that was even 50 percent effective against being sexually assaulted, wouldn’t fairness dictate that we make it available to all young people? A commitment to equity demands broader action.

Pink or blue, the wave that washed over state legislatures across the country makes this a moment of enormous possibility. Soon those newly-elected officials will be sworn in and will get to work. When they do, it will be time for them and their fellow legislators to advance evidence-based policies to protect young people from the lifelong impacts of sexual assault.

Jennifer S. Hirsch is professor of socio-medical sciences at Columbia’s Mailman School of Public Health, co-principal investigator of Columbia’s SHIFT project and co-author of a forthcoming book on campus sexual assault. Stephanie Grilo also contributed to this article.